In the previous post, I looked at motel rates and figured out how much lodging would cost when traveling from New York to LA.

My question for this post is how much would you have to pay in gas money to make the trip? Fortunately, most of the way would be interstate highway. Let’s say your car gets 27 miles to the gallon, which I found is the average fuel efficiency for a passenger car as of 2010. Now it’s 2,790 miles from New York to LA, and I saw gas for $3.27 in Cleveland, Ohio. This means the trip would cost you $337.90 in gas alone!

But maybe you have a Prius that is frugal on gas consumption and can get 48 miles to the gallon. The cost of gas is still going to be $190.07. Now, what if you have a gas-guzzling Hummer H3 that only gets 18 miles per gallon? That puts your total gas cost at a wallet-bleeding $506.85!

Of course gas prices go up and down depending on where you are. And there’s always the chance of getting stopped in traffic due to construction or in the case of an accident. That’s gas money that goes right down the drain–or out the exhaust pipe in this case!